John Oliver’s Viewers Flood FCC Site With Net Neutrality Concerns

Comedian John Oliver, incensed over proposed changes to unravel Net neutrality protections for consumers, on Sunday unleashed a torrent of criticism against the Federal Communications Commission and urged viewers to register their protest online. The response led to a digital meltdown on the agency’s site that night.

Oliver, host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight and a former writer for The Daily Show, targeted a proposal by Ajit Pai, the agency’s new chairman, that would loosen Net neutrality regulations. It would allow Internet service providers to abide by market forces and largely self-police their conduct.

Pai last month proposed reversing the Obama administration’s decision to regulate ISPs under Title II, saying the move stifled innovation and made it more difficult for companies to invest and modernize.

Domestic broadband investment fell by US$3.6 billion, or 5.6 percent, from 2014 to 2016, he noted.

Oliver, who famously unleashed his viewers on the FCC in 2014, in the run-up to its implementation of Net neutrality rules, launched a blistering new attack on Pai, a former Verizon attorney.

Verizon represents itself as being in favor of an open Internet, Oliver noted, in a video featuring Craig Silliman, EVP for public policy and general counsel.

The FCC just wants to put the regulation of ISPs on a «different legal footing,» Silliman argues.

Access Denied

The FCC’s website fell victim to distributed denial of service attacks starting Sunday night, according to David Bray, the agency’s chief information officer.

The attacks were «deliberate attempts by external actors» to bombard the FCC comment system with a high amount of traffic to its external cloud host, he said.

«These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves,» Bray maintained. «Rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC.»

The FCC is working with its commercial partners to address the situation and will monitor events going forward, he said.

The proposed changes have divided the FCC. As a commissioner, Pai sided with the more market-oriented conservatives during the Obama administration.

Pai’s proposal would undo years of work at the agency, said Commissioner Mignon Clyburn last month, when Pai proposed the changes.

«Broadband providers should not be in the driver’s seat, determining how you use the Internet, controlling what content you view, or dictating what devices you can use,» Clyburn argued.

Open Access

Oliver raised some legitimate concerns, Tim Mulligan, senior analyst at Midia Research, including open competition between incumbent ISPs and new entrants in the digital space, and fair access for smaller Internet search engines, content providers and other companies.

«The principal of Net neutrality is a crucial aspect of the digital economy which underpins the ability for new market entrants to compete for digital engagement,» he told the E-Commerce Times.

«John Oliver is merely helping to bring the issue to the attention of the wider public,» Mulligan said. He is «helping to demystify the issue, which in a world of increasing consolidation — through operator/media mega mergers such as AT&T-Time Warner — is an important act of awareness raising.»

«As far as the relevancy and credibility we give John Oliver, there were millions of people who responded to the call to support Net neutrality three years ago,» he told the E-Commerce Times.

«The only thing John Oliver does is make a complex issue understandable by the average citizen and issue a reasonable call to action,» Settles maintained. «What’s important here is the message, not the messenger.»

A Verizon spokesperson declined our request to comment for this story.

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Did you know ?

The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that use the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link devices worldwide.

Approximately 3.2 billion people use the internet. Out of this, 1.7 billion of internet users are Asians. In fact, it is estimated that approximately 200 billion emails and 3 billion Google search would have to wait if the internet goes down for a day.

30,000 websites are hacked every day. Highly effective computer software programs are used by cybercriminals to automatically detect vulnerable websites which can be hacked easily.

First webcam was created at the University Of Cambridge to monitor the Trojan coffee pot. A live 128×128 grayscale picture of the state of the coffee pot was provided as the video feed.

Internet sends approximately 204 million emails per minute and 70% of all the mails sent are spam. 2 billion electrons are required to produce a single email.

First tweet was done on 21st March, 2006 by Jack Dorsey and the first YouTube video to be uploaded was “Meet At Zoo” at 8:27 p.m. on Saturday, April 23, 2005 by Jawed Karim.

The majority of internet traffic is not generated by humans, but by bots and malware. According to a recent study conducted by Incapsula, 61.5% or nearly two-thirds of all the website traffic is caused by Internet bots.

In 2005, broadband internet had a maximum speed of 2 Megabits per second. Today, 100Mbps download speeds are available in many parts of the country. But experts warn that science has reached its limit and fiber optics can take no more data.

The first spam email was sent in 1978 over ARPNET by a guy named Gary Thuerk. He was selling computers.

Online shoppers can buy cars, clothes and millions of other things with the click of a button and figurative swipe of a credit card. In fact, U.S. consumers spend $1,200-$1,300 per year online, but that number will increase by 44%, to $1,738, by 2016. In that year, ecommerce sales are expected to hit $327 billion.

By 2016 the total transaction value of mobile payments in the U.S. hit $62.24 billion. The user base is still relatively small, with only 7.9 million users in 2012. Usage should grow during the next few years to over 50 million mobile payment users by 2017.

51% of people who did not complete a purchase on a mobile device stopped because they did not feel comfortable entering their credit card details

81 percent of people research online before buying it either offline or online.

Only 60 percent of people use search engines to search the products, the rest 40 percent directly land on the ecommerce portals or have direct links

An average online shopper visits the target platform at least 3 times before finalizing the product.

33 percent of online sales take place after 6PM, likely due to the fact that people get back from offices around then, giving them some private time to think of themselves and their needs.